ROSSETTI’S SECRET LOVE

Greymouth Evening Star, 28 September 1928, Page 8

ROSSETTI’S SECRET LOVE

LEADS TO TRAGEDY.

(Australian Press /Association.) Cable —Press Assn.—Copyright.) LONDON, September 27

Sir Hall Caine has published his long-expected “Recollections of Rossetti.” The book reveals that the painter and poet fell in love with a woman, who later became the wife of William Morris.

Rossetti was engaged to Miss Elizabeth Siddall, and he married her. Within two years Mrs. Rossetti divined the secret of her husband’s hidden love for the other woman, and Sir Hall Caine affirms that she poisoned herself with laudanum, leaving Rossetti a, letter, which he destroyed. Twenty years later, during a midnight journey from Cumberland to London, Rossetti unburdened his soul to young Hall Caine, saying that his wife’s mes-’ sage had left a sear on his heart which had never been healed.

hen Rossetti buried the manuscript of poems in his wife’s coffin,” Sir Hall Caine says, “he meant: ‘These were inspired by you. If I wronged you. by losing my love for you, the poems shall go to the grave with you.' ”

Sir Hall Caine writes: “Tho ghost oi Elizabeth Siddall haunted Rossetti's later days, and resulted in Rossetti, in his hermit life, taking chloral, often 1 liree 1 lines a dav.”

Sii - trail Caine does not say that Rossetti ever told Mrs. Morris tlie fact Hit he loved her. Elizabeth Siddall thus lives in his poems, whereas his love for Mrs. Morris lives in- Rossetti’s pictures. s